About Studio 397

Posts by Studio 397 :

It´s getting colder outside, and most of us probably have either switched to winter tyres already or are planning to right now. Brace yourself, winter is here! But as simracers, we’re lucky, our season never ends, so let´s get into this month’s roadmap. It was once again a busy time for us. Let’s be honest here, that probably never ends either: we are pushing rFactor 2 further every single day, but it’s always great to head out to the community with good news like releases or announcements!

Botniaring

In 1989, the gates in Jurva opened to what now is known as the longest and most versatile racetrack in Finland, the Botniaring. It also features different layouts, thanks to the extension of the track in the past from a length of 2618 meter to 4014 meters, making it the longest racetrack in the country. Its smooth tarmac surface has invited multiple races to the region over the years, turning Botniaring into another Finnish motorsport center.

Mostly used for national championships, the track also became popular among northern European championships. With its 3 different layouts, the Botniaring offers thrilling racing action for all kinds of motorsport classes. It might not have seen a full European GT Championship yet, but you can change that in rFactor 2! Choose from the “Long”, “Long with Chicane”, and “Short” layouts to either be challenged by a high-speed track or to take on a breathtaking chicane that needs all your attention if you want to clock a fast lap time. Ah yes, we nearly forgot, the track is live now and servers are also running already, so what are you waiting for?!

Nürburgring

When we announced this track at SimRacing Expo, we already stated this is a monumental task. The 2018 scan data has now been fully processed, and in parallel we have been working on many of the track-side details. We don’t have a lot to show yet, as usually the phases of modeling a track involve a lot of work that is not immediately visible until quite late in the build. We did visit our artists and got some pictures from their workstations while they were working on the track. Planning-wise, we are on schedule, and in a couple of months we hope to be able to show you some in-game shots. Worth mentioning already is that this will be our first full track that is built using our new material system.

McLaren Shadow rFactor 2 Qualifier

After introducing three new free cars to the simulation, we headed into the harsh but exciting world of competitive racing, on the hunt for that one driver that would represent the rFactor 2 community in the McLaren Shadow final later on in Woking. But before anyone could claim this spot, three qualifier rounds broke down the list of participants to the last 30 that had a chance at winning this.

Round 1 at Silverstone

Round one saw our racers flying through Hangars straight at the iconic Silverstone Circuit in the McLaren MP4/8. With everyone ready to shine and willing to do everything to put their stamp on the first round of the new competition, our livestream saw plenty of action and great fights with everyone trying to get inside the top 10 to make their way to the Qualifier final. After 30 minutes we had our first podium of the rFactor 2 McLaren Shadow Competition with Jan von der Heyde winning in front of Michelle D Alessandro and Eros Masciulli.

Round 2 at Zandvoort

The first 10 had their ticket to the Qualifier final, another 20 tickets were still up for grabs. After everyone parked their McLaren MP4/8 in the garage again we went even further back in time with the McLaren M23, a pure drivers car. No electronics, just a steering wheel and pedals. And with these weapons, our best drivers out of the Hotlap Sessions had to go up against each other on Zandvoort. Long fast corners, a lot of banking, and the endless will to fight made up another great livestream during this competition, eventually seeing Georgo Baldi reaching for the top spot and sending Peyo Peev and Kuba Brzenzinski down to the other spots on the podium.

Round 3 at Indianapolis

The championship car of Mika Häkkinen, the McLaren MP4/13, was the car of choice for the last qualifier round, leading our drivers to Indianapolis for a last chance to earn their spot in the Qualifier final. With an aggressive rear end, this car meant serious business for our participants and Indianapolis GP wasn´t willing to make it any easier for them. As this was the last qualifier round, everything heated up quite quickly, with several fighting groups that had to be covered by our live broadcast. In the end it was too much pressure for some drivers which totally threw around the top 10 in the last laps of the qualifier. Managing to keep his MP4/13 under control, it was Mark Berends securing the first place with Kevin Ryan and Antonio Kolarec following closely.

Finals at Longford, NOLA and Sebring

All qualifier rounds had been done and it was time for the Top 30 drivers from around the world to face off in the Qualifier final. Due to it being the big finale with just one spot leading to the McLaren Shadow Event in Woking, we decided to send out drivers to 3 different tracks, using all the new McLaren cars to find out who will represent our beloved Sim.

Normally you would expect a write up about what happened, right? Yeah, me too… not gonna happen XD! There was just too much action everywhere and the battles really showed that everyone was willing to give his best to get the Ticket to the UK. So better watch it yourself! (You fancy a link? It’s down there!). To cut a long story short, after 3 intense races it was Nuno Pinto who leading the standings and lifting himself up to the next level of the competition, the on-site final. Nuno Pinto:

It was really good, I wasn’t really expecting to win the competition. The first race was almost perfect, pole position and win. The second race started really bad with the crash on turn 1, recovered from P20 to P9 and got some good points. The last race was so good, started from pole, but when I switched to 2nd gear the rear end stepped out and to avoid hitting the wall I had to lift the throttle and lost 5 spots, recovered to P3 and that gave me overall win. Really happy and I am already working to be in the best shape possible for the final in January, I don’t really know what to expect but I will try and do my best and make all rFactor 2 players as proud as possible!

On behalf of everybody at Studio 397 and McLaren we would like to congratulate Nuno and wish him all the best in the finals!

Developer Tooling

Developer (modder) tooling is an area we have been quiet on for the last couple of years. Internally, and when supporting our community, we have been building on the rather old 3D Studio Max 2012. Although we released updates that allowed you to work with the 64-bit version of that tool, the fact is that we needed to upgrade to the latest tooling. We are now doing just that, and we expect to release updated plugins for the latest versions of 3D Studio Max soon (they are currently going through internal beta testing). We are also making sure that these tools will continue to work with our new material system, and as always we encourage people to tell us what else they need!

Community Night #3

Our month was once again very busy, but we like to drop some hints here and there. So believe us when we say that we are working on way more than what we can list in this roadmap. Yet with all those sleepless nights coding, writing contracts and grabbing licenses left and right, there still needs to be some time left for us to also enjoy our favorite sim! Right?….RIGHT! Finally that time has come again, and you know its name from previous adventures: the Community Night is back for its 3rd event! Let’s dive into some racing action together on Sunday (4th of November) 7pm CET, to be broadcast on https://www.twitch.tv/rfactorlive

We wanted to celebrate the release of Botniaring and we thought it would be fun to put on our winter jackets and lap the Finnish track with you guys. Deciding on a car class gets harder with every new piece of content we add, so why not just race 2 different layouts with different classes? We will hit the short version with the USF2000, while the roaring GT3’s will conquer the longest ribbon. You can now go for your first laps on our Botniaring servers that are live with the launch, so get ready!

That’s all folks, and don’t forget we are still in the middle of the Halloween Sale, so check out our special offers!!!

To say September was a busy month for us would probably be the understatement of the year. Last time we already hinted at some big news, and the release of no less than three free, iconic McLaren race cars has certainly been well received and confirms our commitment to adding high-quality free and paid content to the simulation. We’ve met many of you at SimRacing Expo at the Nurburgring mid September. The event was highly successful, and I am confident that we will be back next year.

Directly after the Expo, we started our qualification rounds for the McLaren Shadow competition, which will continue well into next month. In the mean time we, almost silently, also released a big update for Zandvoort, featuring all possible layouts, a significant performance improvement as well as proper support for night and wet racing.

Material and Lighting System

Our final announcement at the expo was a new material and lighting system, which is currently in progress, and is based on physically based rendering (PBR). We’ve been working on it for the last couple of months, and its release is still a few months away, but the results so far have been very good. We showed some examples of our new car paint material that simulates a multi-layer paint job, featuring a body or primer, a base coat that is possibly metallic or two-tone, and finally a clear coat – each with parameters that allow you to specify in great detail the specifics of each layer. We did not stop there though, as our cars in general come with templates that allow users to create their own liveries. We now support up to six different materials that can be used on different, configurable regions of the car. This allows people to create liveries with vinyl wraps, shiny metallic bits, carbon parts and many other things all on the same car body. We are already looking forward to the unique designs our community can create with all these new possibilities. What we’re working on in the months ahead is other materials. Arguably the car bodies are very important, but we would also like to improve our cockpit interiors, the way rubber tyres look, and also our road surfaces. Obviously we will make sure that what we do stays compatible with all current content, but what’s more important, we aim to make it very easy to upgrade to these new materials. We’re committed to updating all our own content, and we expect the community to do the same.

Nürburgring

As we told you in the announcement, the scan is done, and both the Nordschleife and GP track are up to 2018 standards. We’re finalizing the important processing of the data now, which – as you might imagine for such a large track – takes some time. In the meantime, our track team already started the huge task of modelling all the details that are visible when you drive around the track: trees, houses, audiences, camping grounds and many other things. We are aiming for a release at the end of Q1 of 2019. In the meantime, we are also looking at our options for the Südschleife. Quite a few people have responded and pointed out available information about this classic track. We have not yet made the decision to build it, and if it happens this layout will certainly be done as a separate project. We’ll keep you posted.

Botniaring

We’ve included some screenshots of a new-final version of Botniaring. As the track was officially licensed, we got extensive opportunities to survey the asphalt and its surroundings, which allowed us to accurately reproduce every little detail of the track. Like many of our other tracks, we will provide the different layouts and we are sure this relatively unknown track will offer some good racing. The release is planned for October, and as mentioned before, this will be a free track.

UI and Competition

The UI and Competition are two areas with a constant buzz of diverse development activity. We’re now at that point where the two teams merge and start to work on getting the competition functionality into the UI itself. So in short, we’re currently integrating UI and competition and preparing for a launch of both systems ‘together’. You’ve probably seen and even participated in the multiple competitions we’ve put on over the last year, where joining and viewing stats was through our web page. We still want to offer join via our webpage, but our ultimate goal is for you to find and join a competition straight from the UI, making it that much easier and that much more tempting to take part!

Of course, we do have some new UI functionality to share with you as well. First, we now have that spiffy animated trackmap you always wished for This trackmap highlights the leader as well as the current driver you have selected (in white). You can click on any number on the track map itself and the list auto-scrolls to and expands that driver. Next, we have a brand new expanded standings pop-up function with color-coded best sectors. Finally, we’ve added a simple minimal graph to the standings, this gives a quick overview of your progress lap by lap as compared to the other drivers around you.

We’re hiring!

Some of you might have seen this post on our forum. We’re hiring! Specifically, we are looking to strengthen our track building team at Studio 397. We’re expecting you to bring your experience and knowledge of modeling tools, and of course you should be an expert in building good and accurate tracks. We will provide you with the necessary hardware and software, a good working environment and an education in tools you are not yet familiar with. If you’re up for a new challenge, check out the post and get in touch: https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/were-hiring-looking-for-environment-artists.61194/

That’s all for now, enjoy the remaining rounds of the McLaren Shadow competition and remember to keep it on the black stuff!

Hot on the tail of the three car pack we released yesterday is the start of one of the world’s most intense and demanding competitions for virtual racers. Last year, rFactor 2 winner Rudy van Buren won the overall prize. Now with the McLaren Shadow project, it’s your turn to compete with some of the best.

We will be hosting three rounds of racing before going into the final. To get into each of these rounds you need to finish high-up in the hotlap standings which happen before each race. The hotlaps last for around a week and if you make it within the required number you will qualify for the weekend showdown of this round. These races are live-broadcasted and officiated, so your time to shine! Top 10 of these Weekend Showdowns qualify for the rFactor 2 Grand Final on the 28th of October.

Winning the rFactor 2 McLaren Shadow final secures you a spot in the McLaren Shadow Project Final later this year, and with this having a shot at becoming part of their esports team.

Registration is now open and if you have either a copy of rFactor 2 installed, or, for the first round only, the brand new rFactor 2 demo, you can dive into the qualifier and experience the authentic replica of iconic McLaren open wheelers of different eras. Servers will be running the first car/track combination from 18th of September onward.

Don´t just admire Icons – become one!

The motorsport world is full of heroic stories, iconic cars and unbelievable moments of success. Many of these tales include McLaren. How many times do we as simracers dream about the golden age of motorsport and wish we could have driven in that era. All the myths around specific cars and the strong characters that drove them fuel our ambition to create our own legendary moments, either on virtual or real tracks.

What would you have done if it was you sitting in the racecar back then? Would it be a story of success or are those beasts too much for you to tame? You can find that out for yourself now and create your own legend of the past – we´re proud to bring you 3 iconic McLaren racecars to give you the most authentic way of diving back into those memories that started the fire and enthusiasm for motorsport that so many of us have.

Anyway, despite me trying to throw out lyrical masterpieces and dreaming about the next Poetry slam, here is the most important part of this release: The cars are free!

When McLaren introduces the M23 to the world in 1973 with first test drives, they knew already that they had created something special. Feedback from the first laps had been amazing, an easy to steer car with a great balance, thanks to nearly all the weight being close to the center, where also the tank was located. The introduction to the Formula 1 World Championship was marked as a complete success before even going into the cars first race, since McLaren managed to put their brand new M23 right on Pole Position.

But it took another year before the british powerhouse was able to lift their first World Championship trophy, making sure that the M23 remained in the hearts of motorsport lovers for years to come while also paving the way for McLaren to become the iconic racing team they are nowadays. 16 Wins were scored with the M23 overall resulting in 2 World Championships, creating the legend of one of the most successfull cars in history.

710 PS were squeezed out of the 3.5 V8 Cosworth engine to propel this McLaren into the fights which would have went viral, if Facebook and YouTube would have been a thing back in 1993. McLaren went onto full attack with the MP4/8, trying to grab another world championship to add to their trophy room. While the car featured innovative technology and an advanced chassis, the team was being let down by engine which in the end didn´t offer as much performance as their competition was able to produce. Nevertheless this car put up a fight for the championship, especially since it featured automatic programmable gearbox, traction control and a host of other options, leaving the driver with more resources to concentrate solely on fighting for the top spots.

At the end of the season, 5 wins across wasn´t quite enough to crown this masterpiece of a car with a title, leaving McLaren with a second place in the driver and constructors championship, despite incredible drives, such as, the legendary drive By Ayrton Senna in the wet at Donington. But even if YouTube was not even invented back then, video clips of fights of this cars are still among the top hits. Step inside the monocoque and go back in time to bring home the trophy the MP4/8 deserves!

Special Features:

The McLaren MP4/8 featured an innovative shifting option with automatic upshift and downshift. As we brought this feature into rFactor, you can program your upshift with specific RPM for each gear, giving you full control of this feature. Of course you can also turn this feature off instead.

Even if Mika Häkkinen had his debut for the McLaren Formula 1 Team on the MP4/8, it was this version in 1998 that lifted him up among the greatest. Designed by Adrian Newey, the new Mp4/13 was a perfect fit to the new ruleset and the grooved tyres. Efficient aerodynamics teamed up with the most powerfull engine (780bhp) on the grid, the car immediately dominated the series and turned the first race into a pure McLaren showcase. Every single competitor got lapped at least once during the Australian Grand Prix, just a sign of what was to come for the rest of the season.

The MP4/13 was able to reach speeds up to 353 km/h and managed to win 9 GPs that season, with Häkkinen lifting the thophy 8 times out of those 9. Eventually it ended up with McLaren securing the constructors championship and the flying Finn to grab the drivers title, bringing back McLaren to the top of the series once again since the 1991 title.

Sometimes you look at the calendar and realize that time can fly past faster than our LMP2 cars ingame. It’s already end of August and we have been so busy with working on rFactor 2 that there is no Roadmap yet. But we couldn’t do without one, right? That would be like breaking a family tradition, and since our team is more about fixin’ things than breaking them, let’s put together a Roadmap for August! As said above already, we’re pretty busy, but with what you might ask? As most of you probably know, SimRacing Expo at the iconic Nürburgring track in Germany is just around the corner and it will kick off big things for us. But let’s do this step by step, it’s a roadmap in the end! (wink)

SimRacing Expo 2018

There is enough going on at this years Expo that we could probably fill the whole Roadmap with it, so let’s concentrate on the major things you should know about it. Obviously we will have a booth at the Expo, so you can come around and meet the team, as we will bring plenty of people along. But just talking to us might be a bit boring all day long, so we will make sure that you will have plenty of reasons to visit the rFactor 2 booth. One of them will be new content that we will show exclusively at our booth, a pre-release of course. Hypemode intensifies!

You want to know more about what this could be? For now you need to live with just 3 words: iconic, fast, competition proven, more at the Expo! (wink) You think that’s it already? Enough reasons to visit us? Nah, we’re in for way more this year! The content shown at the booth will be our first announcement during the Expo, but as Germans say “Alle guten Dinge sind drei”, literally meaning “all good things come in threes”, meaning we will follow up with another announcement during Saturday afternoon.

This second announcement will probably tick a lot of boxes for simracers in terms of their dreams-list for our simulation. We are more then excited to finally share that with you. Sunday will see a third announcement (yep, you’re not getting a day to get back your breath) which will show our dedication to further improving your simracing experience. What happens if you can’t be around then? Don’t worry, we will stream all announcements and first talks about them live from our booth onto our channels. Missing them is not an option at all.

Before we all now dive into the guessing-game about what could be in the announcements, let’s have a look at the other topics of our roadmap…

UI and Competition

We are fully aware that everyone is awaiting news on the UI and we’re still working hard every day on this topic. Many steps are needed to implement an UI like the one we envision, which is taking a lot of time. We are still tweaking and optimising, and we will be able to show parts of the new interface at the Expo. Of course we are very curious to get your feedback there!

On the competition side, we have been integrating different session types so we can have events that consist of combinations of practice, qualification and race sessions and we are looking at different ways to score events. In the last month or so we have also been researching and testing a rating system, feeding it data of many races and evaluating its outcome. We’re nowhere near done, but some of these improvements we will certainly already bring to the McLaren Shadow competition next month.

Content

On the content side, we won’t yet spoil the surprises we have in store for the Expo. Previously we’ve announced both Zandvoort and the Reiza Pack to be almost ready and we do anticipate both to become available in September.

Community

Community is our favorite topic, because most of the time this means we can have some action as well. What we’re talking about? Obviously our community night! We did not forget about it at all, so you can expect a new date for some racing and talking on-stream soon. Maybe we should also do a vote for track/car combinations? As always, if you got feedback, suggestions/ideas, feel free to drop into our Discord server and let us know!

And now for the big one, Sebring! Since taking over the development of rFactor 2, our goals have been clear: take an already incredible simulation as a base and move the bar higher, push new and exciting features that you want, and give you the chance to experience a professional grade simulator – at home!

So this track release is more than just “a track release”. It’s a milestone for our team in what we’ve set out to do. The level of fidelity and road feel is above and beyond anything that’s out there, and we’re boldly confident you will agree. Of course we’re excited to say the track was created using an extremely detailed laserscan – but it’s not just about the laserscan itself, it’s about the way we utilized the data and converted it into usable detailed information that gets back to the force feedback in your wheel, something that has not yet been done in rFactor 2 at this level. We feel we’ve achieved our goals in the high level of road fidelity thanks to some innovations and, of course, rigorous testing. The end result is… the ‘FFB’ doesn’t lie – you’ll feel every crack in the pavement and every undulation in minute detail. On the straights and as you dive into each turn, those subtle nuances in the track surface will give you the precise control and muscle memory that a real-life driver would have on track. Our development and test teams have all become addicted, driving endless stints and trying to get that elusive extra tenth or even hundredth of a second!

On the visual and graphics side, we’re just as excited and pushing ahead. We’ve paid close attention to those essential details that add to the overall immersion. The road surface itself is very precisely modeled on the real thing, with every crack and repaired and re-repaired crack. All the nuances and color variations as well as the overall worn-down, characteristic look from years of racing help to really convey the atmosphere. And with an ultra high level of trackside objects in the environment, from spectators to campers and vehicles, there’s a real ‘track vibe’ from any camera you’re viewing from, which makes watching an online event that much more exciting. Of course, as always, we’ve kept in mind scalability for performance.

So today we release to you Sebring. The main layout is available in two versions. One featuring the 12-hour race layout, with a packed infield and a lot of spectators, and another that gives you more of a “track day” feel. On top of that we also included two shorter layouts: School and Johnson Club. These layouts are very well suited for smaller fields of cars and somewhat slower cars.

Sebring is completely laser scanned in location, through professional high density, high accuracy, laser scan equipment. We scanned the track just a few weeks before the 2018 “12 Hours Of Sebring”. We then processed, filtered and optimized all the data to produce a clean stream of points for the simulation. We used that data to describe and model everything from centerline to first barriers, so even if you put your tires off the grass, you’ll still get a complete simulation of the grounds, through both physics/FFB and graphics.

History

The Sebring race track is built on the site of Hendricks Army Airfield, a United States Army Air Forces training base for Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress pilots in operation from 1941 to 1946. Sebring as a well known racetrack has a long and colorful history, dating as far back as 1950.

The brain child of Alec Ulmann, a Russian entrepreneur, who had a unique vision of the old airfield. As a motor racing aficionado, he saw an airfield and its access roads combined as one whole ‘racetrack’, full of potential. This is part of the main reason even today that Sebring remains a very engaging track to drive on. Although lacking in any real elevations, the combination of surfaces that alternate during a lap – part road, part airstrip – become a uniquely challenging and varied set of turns with a rhythmic and enigmatic flow. In short, it’s hard to explain why it’s so fun to drive, but it just is. Sebring is a track with ample room to race, and yet it still doesn’t feel spoiled with miles of runoff.

And today, decades later, the tradition of racing passion continues unbroken, with most notably the “12 hours of Sebring”. “America’s oldest sports car endurance race” – currently in its 66th year – is where some of the best world class multi-class racing can be found!

Turn by turn

Sebring 12 Hour Layout

The 12 Hour layout of Sebring is 5.95km with a total of 17 turns:

Turn 1: The Initiation

Sebring’s first turn gets you right into the mind set with its undulating concrete surface: it is extremely bumpy, fast, and blind ! On entry, stay as far as you can on the outside right without clipping the pit-wall, and dive into the apex while staying heavy on brakes. It is key to keep the brake pressure steady as you ease into the inside wall apex. If you manage that, you’ll be able to floor it out and sail onto the tarmac section. Take it wrong and you’ll watch helplessly as your car slowly drifts to the outside. Sawing and the stabbing brakes like a maniac won’t always help you to avoid ending up on the dirt and grass. It’s a fine line!

Turn 2, 3, 4, 5: Smooth in Smooth Out

Just off T1, if you made it safe and sound, you’ll need to quickly gauge your speed into the incoming chicane-like series of bends. Key here is ease it in, stay one gear higher to keep the car settled to avoid snappy rear oversteer. Hold a steady amount of throttle, utilize the suspension roll to glide through and accelerate out onto the big bend in one swooping motion. Carry too much speed and you’ll most likely end up visiting the grass outside of T5, too little and you’ll bog down and lose momentum.

Turn 6, 7: The Big Bend, and the Hairpin Awaits!

Once you’re safely through T5 you’ll have space to make an easy pass if you’ve carried slightly more momentum than the cars in front of you. Here on the Big Bend full throttle is essential – but keep your wits, and prepare for the hairpin that comes up quicker than you think. The hairpin at Sebring, as you can see by the enormously generous runoff, has seen many cars obliviously fly off as if brakes were not even a thing. This short concrete section will easily catch you off guard. Overestimate the braking zone and a lock up is a certainty. It’s a deceptive entry and oh-so-easy to get wrong, even after you’ve taken it hundreds of times.

Turn 7, 8, 9: Fangio! Watch those tenths of a second fall.

Just out of the hairpin you’re quickly back on tarmac. This transition needs to be taken into account, a slight bit of over throttle and you risk losing the back-end completely. If you’ve hit it just right, you’ll see a big boost by getting on throttle early. The short abrupt bend of T8 can be taken full on, but keep your trajectory as straight as possible just until you need to start merging right onto the iconicly named Fangio bend…

Turn 10, 11: Cunningham and Collier

This next pair of tight snappy off-camber turns is easy to get wrong, but exhilarating when you hit it just right. The trick here is to brake a touch earlier and keep enough rolling momentum while retaining the minimal amount of lateral grip to stay on track. Avoid clipping the inside right curb of T10, and progressively ease on the throttle just as you reach the apex of T11, at this point you want to squeeze hard with max throttle with quick up-shifts going into T12.

Turn 12 and 13: The Right Angle

Turn 12 is somewhat easygoing, but watch the front end lift during up-shifts. For that short moment you can accelerate and hammer up through the gears. The right angle turn ahead will make you pay dearly if the car isn’t settled by the time you’re starting to brake into T13. Keep an eye on the outside left curb on entry. If you hit it fast enough, chances are you’ll snap over-steer even before turning in. In T13 you want as much coasting speed as possible with minimal braking. Again, avoid the inside right curb, but get as snug to it as you can to maintain a smooth arc and consistent exit speed.

Turn 14, 15, 16: What runoff?

Flying Fortress Straight just off T13 is a good place to look for a clean pass. Here, you’ll edge up into top gears, and just as you have to slow into T14, a very harmonious and gradual series of esses leads into T16. For this last turn onto the Ullman straight, you’ll need to dip just outside on the left side before taking the last mid-speed right hander. Let the inside right curb help rotate in, then be aggressive on the throttle and ride the left-hand exit curb. Keep in mind the outside part of the curb slopes away and will send you into the grass if you hit it while slamming the throttle.

Turn 17: The Sunset Bend, Hail Mary or Mind the Bump

And now for the grand finale, The Ullman straight and Sunset Bend. The Ullman straight’s 870 meters of straight line speed, the best place to get a tow and slipstream past another car, will send you hurling into the last turn in top gear.

Known as the sunset bend, this is one of the most iconic turns in motor sports. With its teeth-rattling concrete slabs and its vast open space, it lends itself to some very spontaneous and creative racing lines, on entry and on exit, not to mention the mind blowing passing situations. The key here is understanding the terrain and knowing how to manage the big bump at the apex: braking hard and late into the turn, hugging that first right-hand wall and modulating the brakes for what seems like forever. You need to ease into the invisible apex, letting your intuition and gut feel guide you more than your choreographed memory. Each time you take Sunset, it’s a new experience to some degree, and it leaves you always feeling you can do it better, motivating you to keep pushing !

Sebring School Layout

The School layout is 3.22km with a of a total of 6 turns and shares the lower half of the track layout with the full 12 hour, as well as the same garage and pitlane.

Turn 2, 3

The first turn at Sebring School layout is the same as the full 12 hour, however you need to be much slower into T2 and T3 that now become a short snappy pair of right hand turns onto the T4,T5, and T6 (which are the same as the 12 hour T15,T16,T17)

Sebring Johnson Club

The Johnson club layout is 2.47km with a total of 11 turns and shares the upper half of the track layout with the full 12 hour. It has it’s own alternate garage and pitlane.

Turn 5, 6

With Cunningham and Collier becoming the first turns, the flow of the Johnson layout makes you feel like it’s in another track altogether. Flying fortress Straight is shortened and leads into the new turns 5 and 6 then back onto T7 and into the Big Bend.

This month, we wanted to surprise you all by releasing the roadmap update a bit earlier than usual because we have quite a few things to announce, so let’s get started!

Upcoming Events

First of all, we have a few events planned that we want to announce.

ChinaJoy

August 3rd to 6th, Studio 397 will be present in Shanghai for the yearly ChinaJoy event. If you’re in the area, please drop by and take advantage of the opportunity to say hello and take rFactor 2 for a spin.

SimRacing Expo

September 14th to 16th we’re happy to announce that we will be present at this year’s SimRacing Expo at the Nürburgring. We invite everybody to come and visit us for a glimpse into the future of rFactor 2. As always we will bring a few surprises!

McLaren Shadow

Earlier this month, McLaren introduced their all new hunt for the brightest and best esports talent, dubbed “McLaren Shadow Project“. This is the follow up to last year’s “World’s Fastest Gamer” that saw Rudy van Buren take the win. We are delighted to announce that we will be part of this competition again, building several new McLaren cars for the upcoming events. And the best news is that they will all be available for free!

Upcoming Releases

Then, there are a lot of new releases coming up now and in the near future.

Today: New Build, GT3 and Endurance Pack Updates

We are about to release a new build with a few improvements and new features. Especially, but not exclusively, for our Virtual Reality users, we have included a new feature called “Stabilize Horizon” that allows you to enable a low, medium or high amount of stabilization, which helps keep the horizon stable on bumpy tracks and still works properly on strongly banked tracks. We’ve also made a few changes in our DX11 graphics engine. First of all, we caught and fixed some issues with the brake disc glow on some cars. An issue that only showed up on 6-core CPUs with no hyperthreading and caused rendering problems in our shadow maps was also found and fixed. For tracks, we added support for a new dirt map, a feature you will see on Sebring and that will be explained shortly in our developer documentation. We slightly adjusted the logic for our “pit director” that will tell you how and when to leave your garage as he was a bit oddly placed in some cases. Last but not least, we also spent some time optimizing our post effects, which has resulted in a healthy increase in performance with those enabled.

In our previous roadmap, we already announced that we were close to releasing an update to our very popular GT3 cars. Over the last couple of months, we’ve received a lot of feedback on these cars, and we sat down and incorporated all of that in this update. On top of that, we’ve included the new in-car traction control and anti-lock brake settings, position lights colored green for the GT3 class and our very latest set of tyres to align the cars with our endurance pack. We also tweaked the Balance of Performance to ensure continued close racing.

As part of our continued development of the Endurance pack, our visit to Duqueine Engineering, which we will report on in a separate blog, also got us some crucial feedback on the handling characteristics of the Oreca and Norma cars and a unique chance to compare telemetry. These and other tweaks based on feedback have been incorporated in an update of the Endurance pack.

Both packs will be released later today. Leagues that don’t want to immediately make the switch are encouraged to keep a copy of the previous version. That said, we’ve tried our best to ensure a good balance of performance and also made sure you can run classes from both packs together nicely.

Tomorrow: Sebring

Since taking over the development of rFactor 2, our goals have been clear: take an already incredible sim as a base and move the bar higher, push new and exciting features that you want, and give you the chance to experience a professional grade simulator – at home! The release of Sebring tomorrow is another step in that direction. We will follow up with more details later.

Next Month: Reiza rF2 Bundle

Some of you might have seen the teasers that were posted by Reiza Studios. We can now officially announce that they have been working hard on bringing some great content into rFactor 2. No less than four cars and two tracks will be part of this pack, all of which will be released in August. We expect Reiza to soon release more details of their planned content!

Community Night

Earlier this month, we scheduled the first community event, and we would like to thank everybody who watched and participated in it. Because of its success, we decided to do another one on Friday, July 27th at 20:00 CEST. We will obviously take this opportunity to look at the updated GT3 and Endurance packs. We will also take an in-depth look at Sebring International Raceway and provide some background on the process of creating it, so make sure you tune in and follow our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/rfactorlive. We certainly hope to see you there. In any case, happy simracing, that’s all for this month!

June has been an eventful month. We released the Endurance Pack and we’re still in the middle of the Steam Summer Sale, which discounts the simulation and the different content packs and offers a nice opportunity to complete your collection. Of course we are already looking ahead again and while some of us are taking a well deserved break, others are working on all different areas of the game.

Studio 397 was also invited to the official opening of the virtual Maastricht city racing track. It is not often that one of our community created tracks attracts the local press and the mayor of Maastricht all gathered in a local movie theatre. Even Bono Huis, winner of the Vegas eRace, was there to do a lap. By now the track can be found in our workshop and can freely be downloaded.

Content

We are currently preparing an update to our GT3 pack as we already indicated when releasing the Endurance pack. This update includes the position lights, new in-car traction control and anti-lock brake settings as well as the latest set of tyres. All of those are in, we’re now checking the BOP and doing a few minor fixes.

For Zandvoort we’ve just finished the night lighting. There are still a few other layouts to complete and obviously we’ve also addressed some of the performance issues that were still present in the latest public release.

Sebring is in the middle of testing and optimization. As you might have seen from previous screenshots, we are trying to recreate the atmosphere on the track during the yearly 12 hour race. We are also planning a version with more of a “track day” feel in case you want to do some training without everybody watching your every move.

Rain

When we released our performance update, we already indicated that we were aware that the specific combination of using VR and rain still was causing problems, frame rate wise, and that we would be addressing those in a future update. We are happy to announce that we have found a good solution that gives a significant improvement and we’ll be releasing that next month. This update also includes another visual fix which made the raindrops become too large in external TV cameras. Finally it has a few small fixes that caused the wipers to sometimes skip a frame and not always start in the correct starting position.

UI

We are currently working on a few more important details in the interface. For one we are adding a search function to all places where you select something from a potentially long list of things, such as cars and tracks. We are also improving opponent selection, allowing more fine-grained control over exactly what cars you race. The final bits we are tweaking now are the standings, including the position in class we also use with our position lights.

Community Nights

We all know, racing and especially simracing is not only about competition. It´s also about spending time with friends and teammates and tackle different challenges. We always try to be transparent and close to the community, so we thought it would be great to arrange a date every now and then! The idea for community nights was born. Race among friends and developers, ask some questions or even see a race broadcast and enjoy the thrill of a friendly competition. Who knows, we might also give you a peek at some upcoming content in some of those events. We’ve scheduled our first event on Monday, July 9th at 20:00 CEST. Stay tuned!

Looking Ahead

Earlier this month we visited the Duqueine Engineering headquarters for more simulator testing. Expect a new blog about that in a few weeks time, where we reveal a bit more about how we collaborate. And remember, if you want to have a chat with us, join our Discord server or join one of our servers, running official content.

About rFactor 2

rFactor 2 is the most diverse simulation to date, featuring many of the world’s motorsports built with the upmost authenticity, from Formula cars, to Karts to Stock Cars. It provides full single player modes, from championships to hotlaps and one of the most robust online and offline multiplayer platforms. Featuring day to night transitions, full live weather cycles and a dynamic track surface which reacts to the temperature and how much rubber has been laid down by other cars. Our AI is renown for being the most realistic in racing and learns tracks by driving and exploring new lines.

About the packs

The GT3 Power Pack features five iconic GT3 class cars. The McLaren 650S GT3, Bentley Continental GT3, Callaway Corvette C7 GT3-R, Radical RXC Turbo GT3 and the Mercedes AMG GT3. All cars are closely matched and accurate representations of the real cars and form a consistent series of cars to race with.

The Formula E pack contains the 2018 Formula E Car and the teams, as well as a stunning rendition of the HKT Hong Kong E-Prix track! Developed in close partnership with Formula E itself. The series itself is thrilling and challenging in ways that will surprise you. You’ll have to rethink your strategy. Although the racing still retains its close side-by-side action, tactics and strategy now play an equal role!

KartSim is one of our close partners, and specialises in providing high-end leading-edge hardware, rigs and simulation software to the international karting industry. It is only the first in a series of Karts and tracks yet to be released by the KartSim team. There’s more to come in the future.

You can click on any of the images below to directly to to the page for that pack.

It’s safe to say we are ecstatic about this release! Our very first mixed class pack of GTEs and LMPs! It’s been a wild journey, and all the teams involved have been going non-stop to bring these cars to life – we think the results will show on track as you cruise around in a field of color and lights! We proudly announce some of the most relevant and iconic brands and cars, combing them into a unique pack. Welcome to the ‘Endurance Pack’ for rFactor 2! Featuring the Porsche 911 RSR, BMW M8 GTE, Corvette C7.R, Oreca 07 LMP2 and the Norma M30 LMP3. With stunning physics and new features, the pack taps into the heart of rFactor 2’s endurance capabilities. We are also happy to have liveries from various different teams racing these cars, and we would like to thank them all for that!

Introducing the cars

Our goal with this pack was certainly to offer a wide variety of cars in different classes used in various modern endurance racing series. We ended up picking five widely used cars in three different classes, complementing our earlier GT3 pack. We deliberately did not include an LMP1 car as that class is currently undergoing a transformation, and we feel strongly about providing you with cars that are up to date and future proof. Once the dust settles on the current “super season” we will certainly look at the new cars that emerge! With that said, back to our amazing cars…

Oreca 07 LMP2

The fastest class in this pack is the LMP2 class, and the Oreca 07 is certainly a popular weapon of choice for teams. It combines daring engineering and skillful know-how. The car debuted late 2006 and competed for the first time in the opening round of the 2017 IMSA season. In its first season it was the winner of the WEC 2017 P2 class and of Le Mans 2017; it is used by several of the leading endurance teams in the world. During various stages we have had feedback from Duqueine Engineering, Dragonspeed and Jacky Chan Racing, and their input was invaluable to making this car.

Norma M30 LMP3

The Norma M30 LMP3 had a development cycle of 18 months with innovation at its heart. It was homologated to LMP3. The M30 boasts maximum efficiency, optimised performance, which lead it to instantly becoming a strong contender, winning various races in the series it entered in. Cars in this class offer a pure driving experience. Neither anti-lock brakes nor traction control are allowed, and the downforce on these cars combined with the available engine power makes them challenging and rewarding to drive. During the development of this car we collaborated closely with the team at Duqueine Engineering, who raced this car in ELMS and kindly helped us with many aspects of the car’s simulation.

Porsche 911 RSR

Another iconic car from Porsche, the 911 RSR combines technology and history to create another classic sports car. The car is used in endurance in the GTE class all over the world. Porsche successfully adapted the classic 911 design to make this a mid-engine design, optimizing balance and performance. We are very grateful for the support we got from Porsche in developing this car. It is the very latest spec of this car.

Corvette C7.R

The Chevrolet Corvette C7.R, built by Pratt & Miller and Chevrolet for competition in endurance racing, has had numerous successes throughout the years, including a famous photo-finish at the 2016 Rolex 24h of Daytona. Corvette won its class at Le Mans eight times and won 107 out of the 202 events they competed in. Our version is the latest spec car, with updated diffuser and rear wing, and it is of course the successor to the highly successful C6.R we already have in our simulation.

BMW M8 GTE

The BMW M8 GTE competes in multiple endurance series, combining cutting-edge technology with sheer beauty to create a car that will set new benchmarks in endurance racing. We are extremely proud to be the first racing simulation to feature this car after seeing the car in action at Spa earlier this year and being able to talk to the team and drivers there.

New features

In-car traction control

rFactor 2 already featured “driving aids” that provided both traction control and anti-lock brakes, but like all driving aids they are global for all cars in a session. Especially in multi-class racing, and this pack is a good example, it is common to have different classes that might or might not have traction control available. Therefore we decided to add the option for specific cars to feature traction control (and anti-lock brakes) as part of the car, completely separate from any “aids” settings. On top of that, we can configure the exact number of “levels” the real cars have and decide if you can adjust those levels in-car or just in the garage as part of your setup, and even if you can turn it off or not, as some cars have such aids built-in and you can’t even disable them.

For this pack, traction control is available only on the LMP2 and GTE cars, and there are a couple of things you need to know to set it up. First of all, as this is a system that is separate from the driving aids, to make in-car adjustments you need to go to your controller settings and map the following four new keys:

On top of that, you can also configure these settings in the garage setup:

As a final note, if you also have driving aids enabled for one of these cars, the effects of both will correctly be combined. For example, if you set traction control to 2 (which is fairly low) in the in-car setting and then turn on the driving aid to “Medium”, the end result will be that you have medium traction control. We expect most servers and people to simply disable those aids for official races though.

Position lights

This pack is not just about content, we also took the opportunity to add some new tech to add to the immersion of multi-class racing. The all new ‘position lights’ on all cars in the this pack will not only show your individual position, they will also show your position in class with color coding. On top of that, the lights turn into a pit stop timer ‘counting up’ when you pit!

The road ahead

New cars and features always trigger the question “what about the existing cars”? Our close collaboration with teams and manufacturers have given us even more detailed insight into the tyres that they are running on these cars. On top of that, our laser scanned version of Sebring gave us an excellent opportunity to compare data to a 100% accurate track. The data prompted us to make some updates to our model, and since the GT3 cars are using the same tyres, our next step will be to go back to and implement and test the tyres on those cars too, which in general will make them a bit slower.

The same applies to the position lights as well as the in-car traction control and anti-lock brakes, which will be added as features to each individual GT3 car. We don’t have an exact ETA for these changes yet, as we also need to make sure these changes don’t affect the BOP within the class, but we will certainly keep you up to date in our monthly roadmap. We will also add documentation to our website for third parties that wish to implement these new features on their cars, as well as publish example tyres.

That’s all for now, we wish you all a great weekend from everybody within Studio 397! Enjoy the race!